In our industrial society consumer goods are produced at a very fast rate, especially products like bottles, cans, paper, clothing, and articles made of plastics. People also buy new automobiles, refrigerators, pots, (frying pans)/(skillets), and saucepans for the kitchen, throwing away their old ones. These abandoned objects are very valuable. It is possible to continue using many of them and recycle the component materials of others.

Industry also generates millions of tons of waste every year, and much of it is recyclable. Though many industries already recycle part of their waste, the scale of such activities should be expanded. The governments of the world recognize that recycling is a rational way of using resources that would otherwise contaminate our land and oceans. Many countries have inaugurated large-scale recycling programs to reduce the rate of local pollution.

But our modern economy demands that people continue to buy things to enrich our industrial corporations, and the design of their products often does not make it easy to repair them. Their designs are often changed in frivolous ways, and our corporations often use aggressive advertising programs to manipulate the public into believing that their old products are worthless and that their new ones embody the ultimate in aesthetic and utilitarian perfection. There is an ongoing conflict between this philosophy of industrial production and the serious damage (that) it inflicts on our environment.

Nevertheless, in some countries like the United States and in some cities such as London and Curitiba in Brazil, obligatory recycling programs have been initiated to guarantee that their local environments will not be contaminated with substances that can be recycled.

The raw materials of many things that we use in our houses or our farms (such as plastics, nylon, and some fertilizers) are the hydrocarbons of petroleum or of natural gas, which are not renewable resources. We have only a limited amount of them underground, and eventually we will exhaust them.

The production of recycled paper demands only 50% (fifty percent) of the energy that would be needed for the production of paper made from wood paste. The production of recycled paper also reduces water contamination by 35% (thirty-five percent) and air pollution by almost 75% (seventy-five percent). This reduction is important because manufacturing paper releases large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Every year the amount of domestic waste increases, especially in the developed countries. (About)/(Around) 80% (eighty percent) of our domestic waste, in theory, can be recycled. But because of the contamination of much of this waste, only 60% (sixty percent) of it is clean enough for recycling. If we recycled, we could reduce by about 50% (fifty percent) the amount of waste that we produce. But what we can recycle depends on the collection systems available to us, and many places lack the infrastructure to support serious recycling programs.

In some cities in Spain, Britain, the United States, Canada, and Germany there are selective collection systems for domestic waste. People who use these systems must segregate their recyclable waste in different receptacles. In other places people accumulate their recyclable products in their homes and then carry them to a collection center and put them into large receptacles for different types of articles.

After these recyclable articles are collected, they are classified, cleaned, and transported to treatment plants. Glass is separated into green, maroon, and transparent articles. Then they are melted. Aluminum cans are pressed and flattened.

Paper articles are reduced to paste to manufacture new paper or cardboard articles. Paper of the highest quality can be used as raw material for manufacturing paper for use in offices or in the production of books or other articles demanding this kind of paper.